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At Apple Event, With Secrets Spilled, No Surprises

Left, 9to5Mac; right Apple.At left, the leaked images of the iPhone 5. At right, the actual iPhone announced by Apple.

One of the big surprises at Wednesday’s Apple Event was the lack of surprises.

Even after Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in May that he was going to “double down on secrecy about our products,” nearly everything about the event had already leaked out onto the Internet, days, weeks and months before.

(Ironically, most of the secret images of the latest iPhone are captured by people’s smartphones with high-resolution cameras.) The only thing people didn’t report was the apparent dress code at the event. Executives were in jeans and untucked shirts.

But, can Apple really stop its leaks?

“As Apple gets bigger and more complex, with more products, more partners and more customers, secrecy will become increasingly difficult,” explained Adam Lashinsky, author of “Inside Apple” and writer for Fortune.

Even if the company could successfully plug the holes in Cupertino, Calif., where it is headquartered, it now has to contend with a global supply chain, where most of the spy photos actually come from.

The company also has an army of refined bloggers that nibble at the smallest and most esoteric pieces of news about the company and its shiny gadgets.

But Mr. Lashinsky noted that these leaks probably don’t affect Apple’s sales, and in reality, only a small portion of the public actually gets a glimpse of purported new product images.

“It’s important to keep things in perspective. As their business is increasingly global, the percentage of their customers who pay attention to product blogs gets smaller and smaller,” he said.